LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Chapi ^ Copyright No. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE SOUTH AFRICAN 
QUESTION 



BY 

AN ENGLISH SOUTH AFRICAN 

{Olive Schrehier) 

AUTHOR OF "the STORY OF AN AFRICAN 
FARM," "dreams," ETC 



CHICAGO 

CHARLES H. SERGEL COMPANY 
1899 

M 



1899. 




40275 

Copyright, 1899, by Olive Schreiner. 
TWO OUH!^ N -^£CeiV6&. 









i fc.uit.ai!iii.L)j? 



" Then let us pray that come it may. 

As come it will for a' that; 
That truth and worth, o'er a' the earth. 

May bear the gree, and a' that; 
For a' that, and a' that; 

IPs coming yet, for a' that; 
That man to vian, the world o''er. 

Shall brothers be for a' that.'''' 



'''■Put up thy sword: they that hold the sword 
shall perish by the sword, ''^ 



THE SOUTH AFRICAN 
QUESTION. 

Many views have found expression 
in the columns of papers during the last 
weeks. The working man only a few 
weeks or months from England has ex- 
pressed his opposition to those strata-"^ 
gems with war for their aim which 
would leave him without the defence 
he has at present from the pressure of 
employers. JournaUsts only a few years, 
months, or weeks from Europe, have 
written, not perhaps expressing a de- 
sire for war, but implying it might be 
well if the wave swept across South 
Africa, and especially across that por- 
tion which is richest in mineral wealth, 
and, therefore, more to be desired. 



6 The South African Question. 

South Africans and men from Europe 
alike have written deprecating war, be- 
cause of the vast suffering and loss it 
would occasion to individuals. Dutch 
and English South Africans have writ- 
ten (as one in an able and powerful let- 
ter dated from Vrededorp, which ap- 
peared a few days ago) proving the 
injustice that would be inflicted on the 
people of Africa, the violation of 
treaties and trust. But, amid all this 
chorus of opinion there is one voice 
which, though heard, has not yet been 
heard with that distinctness and fulness 
which its authority demands — it is the 
voice of the African-born Englishman 
who loves England, the man who, born 
in South Africa, and loving it as all 
men, who are men, love their birth- 
land, is yet an Englishman, bound to 
England not only by ties of blood, but 



The South African Question. t 

that much more intense passion which 
springs from personal contact alone. 
Our position is unique, and it would 
seem that we are marked out, at the 
present juncture of South African af- 
fairs, for an especial function, which 
imposes on us, at whatever cost to our- 
selves, the duty of making our voices 
heard and taking our share in the life 
of our two nations, at their 

MOST CRITICAL JUNCTURE. 

For, let us consider what exactly 
our position is. 

Born in South Africa, our eyes first 
opened on these African hills and 
plains; around us, of other parentage 
but born with us in the land, our birth- 
fellows, were men of another white 
race ; and we grew up side by side with 
them. Is it strange that, like all men 



8 The South African Question. 

living, who have the hearts of men, we 
learnt to love this land in which we 
first saw light? In after years, when 
we left it, and lived months or years 
across the seas, is it strange we carried 
it with us in our hearts? When we 
stood on the Alps and looked down on 
the lakes and forests of Switzerland, 
that we have said, "This is fair, but 
South Africa to us is fairer?" That 
v/hen on the top of Milan Cathedral 
and we have looked out across the wide 
plains of Lombardy, we have said, 
"This is noble ; but nobler to us are the 
broad plains of Africa, with their 
brown kopjes shimmering in the trans- 
lucent sunshine?" Is it strange that 
when, after long years of absence, years 
it may be of success and the joy which 
springs from human fellowship and 
youth, our ship has cast its anchor in 



The South African Question. 9 

sight of Table Bay, and the great front 
of Table Mountain has reared up be- 
fore us, a cry of passionate joy has 
welled up within us ; and when we saw 
the black men with their shining skins 
unloading in the docks, and the rugged 
faces of South Africans, browned with 
our African sun, we put our foot on 
the dear old earth again, and our hearts 
have cried : "We are South Africans ! 
We have come back again to our land 
and to our people?" Is it strange that 
when we are in other lands and we fear 
that death approaches us, we say: 
"Take me back! We may live away 
from her, but when we are dead we 
must lie on her breast. Bury us among 
the kopjes where we played when we 
were children, and let the iron stones 
and red sand cover us ?" Is it strange 
that wherever we live we all want to 



10 The South African Question. 

go home to die ; and that the time comes 
when we know that dearer far to us 
than fame or success is one Httle hand- 
ful of our own red South African 
earth ? Is it strange that, when the 

TIME OF STRESS AND DANGER 

comes to our land, we realize what, per- 
haps, we were but dimly conscious of 
before, that we are Africans, that for 
this land and people we could live — if 
need be, we could die ? 

Is it strange we should feel this? 
The Scotchman feels it for his heathery 
hills, the Swiss for his valleys. All 
men who are men feel it for the land 
of their birth ! 

What is strange is not that we have 
this feeling, but that, side by side with 
it, we have another. We love Africa, 
but we love England also. It is not 



The South African Question. 11 

merely that when for the first time we 
visit the old nesting place of our peo- 
ple it is rich for us with associations, 
that we tread it for the first time with 
something of the awe and reverence 
with which men tread an old cathe- 
dral, rich with remains of the great 
dead and past; it is not merely that 
the associations of language and liter- 
ature bind us to it, nor that in some 
city or country churchyard we stand 
beside the graves of our forefathers, 
and trace on mould-eaten stones the 
names we have been familiar with in 
Africa, and bear as our own ; nor is it 
that we can linger yet on the steps of 
the church where our parents were 
united before they moved to the far 
South, and made of us South Afri- 
cans. Beyond all these impersonal, 
and more or less intellectual ties, we 



12 The South African Question. 

form a personal one with England. 
Whether we have gone home as stu- 
dents to college or university, or for 
purposes of art, literature, or profes- 
sional labor, as time passes there 
springs up around us 

A NETWORK OF TENDER BONDS; 

there are formed the closest friendships 
our hearts will ever know, such as are 
formed only in the spring time of life ; 
there is gained our first deep knowledge 
of life, and there grow up within us 
passions and modes of thought we will 
carry with us to our graves. After 
years, it may be after many years, when 
we return, on the walls of our study in 
South Africa we still keep fastened in 
memory of the past the old oar with 
which we won our first boating victory 
on Cam or Thames; and the faces of 



The South African Question. 13 

the men who shared our victory with 
us still look down at us from our walls. 
Not dearer to any Englishman is the 
memory of his Alma Mater than to him 
who sits thousands of miles off in the 
South, and who, as he smokes his last 
pipe of African Boer or Transvaal to- 
bacco, is visited often by memories of 
days that will never fade, evenings on 
the river with bright faces and soft 
voices, long midnight conclaves over 
glimmering fires, when, with voices and 
hearts as young and glowing as our 
own, we discussed all problems of the 
universe and longed to go out into life 
that we might settle them — they come 
back to us with all the glitter and light 
which hangs only about the remem- 
brances of youth : and for many of us 
the memory of fog-smitten London is 
inextricably blended with the all pro- 



14: The South African Question. 

foundest emotions, the most passionate 
endeavors, noblest relations our hearts 
will ever know. The steamers that 
come weekly to South Africa are not 
for us merely vessels bringing news 
from foreign lands ; nor do they merely 
bring for us the intellectual pabulum 
which feeds our mental life ; they bring 
us 

'"news from home."" 

In London houses, in country cottages, 
in English manufacturing towns, are 
men and women whose life and labor, 
whose joy and sorrows our hearts will 
follow to the end, as theirs will follow 
ours to the end, and across the seas our 
hands will always be interknit with 
theirs. Our labor, our homes, our ma- 
terial interests, may all be in South 
Africa, but a bond of love so strong 
that six thousand miles of sea can only 



The South African Question. 15 

Stretch it, but never sever it, binds us 
to the land and the friends we loved in 
our youth. We are South Africans, 
but intellectual sympathies, habits, per- 
sonal emotions, have made us strike 
deep roots across the sea; and when 
the thought flashes on us, we may not 
walk the old streets again or press the 
old hands, pain rises which those only 
know whose hearts are divided between 
two lands. We are South Africans, 
but we are not South Africans only — 
we are Englishmen also: 

Dear little Island, 
Our heart in the sea! 

If to-morrow hostile fleets encompassed 
England, and the tread of foreign 
troops was on her soil, she would not 
need to call to us ; we would stand be- 
side her before she had spoken. This is 



16 The South African Question. 

OUR EXACT POSITION. 

Side by side with us in South Africa 
are other South Africans whose posi- 
tion is not and cannot be exactly what 
ours is. Shading away from us by im- 
perceptible degrees, stand, on one side 
of us, those English South Africans 
who, racially English, yet know noth- 
ing or little personally of her; the 
grandparents, and not the parents of 
such men, have left England; they are 
proud of being Englishmen, proud of 
England's great record and great 
names, as a man is proud of his grand- 
mother's family, but they are before all 
things essentially South African. They 
desire to see England increase and pro- 
gress, and to remain in harmony and 
union with her while she does not in- 
terfere with internal affairs of South 
Africa, but they do not and cannot feel 



The South African Question. 17 

to her as those of us do whose love is 
personal and whose intellectual sym- 
pathies center largely in England. 

Yet further from us on the same side 
stand our oldest white fellow South 
Africans ; who were, many, not of Eng- 
lish blood originally, though among 
that body of early white settlers, men 
who preceded us in South Africa by 
three centuries, were a few with Eng- 
lish names, and though by intermar- 
riage Dutch and English South Afri- 
cans are daily and hourly blending, the 
bulk of these folk were Dutchmen from 
Holland and Friesland, with a few ^ 
Swedes, Germans and Danes, and4ater ^ 
was intermingled with them a strong y- 
strain of Huguenot blood from France. . 
These men were mainly of that folky 
which, in the sixteenth century, held 
Philip and the Spanish Empire at bay, 



18 The South African Question, 

and struck the first death-blow into^ the 
heart of that mighty Imperial system 
whose death-gasp we have witnessed 
to-day. A brave, free, fearless folk 
with the 

BLOOD OF THE OLD SEA KINGS 

in their veins; a branch of that old 
Teutonic race which came with the 
Angles and Saxons into England and 
subdued the Britons, and who, in the 
persons of the Franks, entered Gaul, 
and spread its blood across Europe. 
They are a people most nearly akin to 
the English of all European folk, in 
language, form and feature resembling 
them, and in a certain dogged persist- 
ence, and an inalienable indestructible 
air of personal freedom. 

Even under the early Dutch Govern- 
nient of the East India Company, they 



The South African Question. 



19 



were not always restful and resented 
interference and external control. They 
frequently felt themselves "^ "onder- 
gedrukt," and, taking their guns, and 
getting together wife and children and 
all that they had, and inspanning their 
wagons, they t trekked away from the 
scant boards of civilization into the 
wilderness, to form homes of freedom 
for themselves and their descendants. 
In 1795 England obtained the Cape 
as the result of European complica- 
tions, and the South African people, 
without request or desire on their part, 
w^ere given over to England. England 
retired from the Cape in 1803, but, ow- 
ing to other changes in Europe, she 
took the Cape again in 1806, and has 
since then been the 

*Ondergedrukt— oppressed. 
tTrekked— moved, traveled. 



20 The South African Question. 

GUARDIAN OF OUR SEAS, 

and the strongest power in our land. 
Since that time, for the last ninety 
years, Englishmen have slowly been 
added to the population, but the men 
of Dutch descent still form the major- 
ity of white South Africans through- 
out the Cape Colony, Free State, and 
Transvaal, outnumbering at the pres- 
ent day, even with the accession of the 
foreigners (Uitlanders mean foreign- 
ers in Dutch) to the goldfields of the 
Transvaal, those of English descent, 
as probably about two to one. 

So' we of England became step- 
mother to this South African people. 
We English are a virile race. There is 
perhaps no one with a drop of English 
blood in his veins who does not feel 
pride in that knowledge. We are a 
brave and, for ourselves, a freedom- 



The South African Question. 21 

loving race ; the best of us have nobler 
qualities yet — we love justice; we ad- 
mire courage and the love of freedom 
in others as well as ourselves; and we 
find it difficult to put our foot on the 
weak, it refuses to go down. At times, 
whether as individuals or as a nation, 
we are capable of the 

MOST HEROIC MORAL ACTION. 

The heart swells with pride when we 
remember what has been done by Eng- 
lishmen, at different times and in differ- 
ent places, in the cause of freedom and 
justice, when they could meet with no 
reward and had nothing to gain. Such 
an act of justice on the part of the Eng- 
lish nation was done in 1881 when 
Gladstone gave back to the Transvaal 
the independence which had been mis- 
takenly taken. I would not say policy 



22 The South African Question. 

had no part in the action of the wise 
old man. No doubt that keen eagle- 
eye had fixed itself closely on the truth 
which all history teaches that a colony 
of Teutonic folk cannot be kept per- 
manently in harmony and union with 
the Mother Country by any bond but 
that of love, mutual sympathy and 
honor. The child may be reduced by 
force to obedience ; but time passes and 
the child becomes a youth; the youth 
may be coerced; but the day comes 
when the youth becomes a man, and 
there can be no coercion then. If the 
mother wishes to retain the affection of 
the man, she must win it from the 
youth. This the wise old man saw ; but 
I believe that, over and above the wis- 
dom, he saw the right, and the action 
was no less heroic because it was wise; 
for other men see truth who have not 



The South African Question. 23 

the courage to follow her, and accept 
present loss for a gain which lies 
across the centuries. 

We English are a fearless folk, and 
in the main I think we seek after jus- 
tice, but we have our faults. We are 
not a sympathetic or a quickly com- 
prehending people ; we are slow and we 
are proud ; we are shut in by a certain 

SHELL OF HARD RESERVE. 

There are probably few of us who have 
not some consciousness of this defect in 
our own persons ; it may be a fault al- 
lied to our highest virtues, but it is a 
fault, and a serious one as regards our 
relations with peoples who come under 
our rule. We may and do generally 
sincerely desire justice; we may have 
no wish to oppress, but we do not read- 
ily understand wants and conditions 



24 The South African Question. 

distinct from our own. Here and there 
great Englishmen have appeared in 
South African history as elsewhere 
(such as Sir William Porter and Sir 
George Grey) who have been able to 
throw themselves sympathetically into 
the entire life of the people about, to 
love them, and so to comprehend their 
wants and win their affections. Such 
men are the burning and shining lights 
of our Imperial and Colonial system, 
but they are not common. Undoubted- 
ly the officials sent out to rule the Cape 
in the old days were generally men who 
earnestly desired to do their duty; but 
they did not always understand the folk 
they had to rule. They were generally 
simple soldiers, brave, fearless and hon- 
orable as the English soldier is apt to 
be, but with hard military conceptions 
of government and discipline. Our 



The South African Question. 25 

Dutch fellow South Africans are a 
strange folk. Virile, resolute, pas- 
sionate with a passion hid far below the 
surface, they are at once the gentlest 
and the most determined of peoples. 
When you try to coerce them they are 
hard as steel encased in iron, but with a 
large and generous response to affec- 
tion and sympathy which perhaps no 
other European folk gives. They may 
easily be deceived once ; but never twice. 
Under the roughest exterior of the up- 
country Boer lies a nature strangely 
sensitive and conscious of personal 
dignity; a people who never forgets a 
kindness and does 

NOT EASILY FORGET A WRONG. 

Our officials did not always under- 
stand them; they made no allowances 
for a race of brave, free men inhabiting 



26 The South African Question. 

a country which by the might of their 
own right hand they had won from sav- 
ages and wild beasts, and who were 
given over into the hands of a strange 
government without their consent or 
desire ; and the pecuHarities which arose 
from their wild free life were not al- 
ways sympathetically understood ; even 
their little language, the South African 
*Taal," a South African growth so 
dear to their hearts, and to all those of 
us who love indigenous and South 
African growths, was not sympathet- 
ically and gently dealt with. The 
men, well meaning, but military, tried 
wdth this fierce, gentle, sensitive, free 
folk force, where they should have ex- 
ercised a broad and comprehensive 
humanity; and when they did right (as 
when the slaves were freed), they did 
it often in such manner, that it became 



The South African Question. 27 

practically wrong. A little of that tact 
of the higher and larger kind, which 
springs from a human comprehension 
of another's difficulties and needs, 
might, exercised in the old days, have 
saved South Africa from all white- 
race problems; it was not, perhaps un- 
der the conditions, could not, be exer- 
cised. The people's hearts ached under 
the uncompromising iron rule. In 1 815 
there was a rising, and it was put down. 
As the traveler passes by train along 
the railway from Port Elizabeth to 
Kimberley, he will come, a few miles 
beyond Cookhouse, to a gap between 
two hills; to his right flows the Fish 
River ; to his left, binding the two hills, 
is a ridge of land called in South Africa 
a "nek." It is a spot the thoughtful 
Englishman passes with deep pain. In 
the year 181 5 here were hanged fiv^ 



28 The South African Question. 

South Africans who had taken part in 
the rising, and the women who had 
fought beside them (for the South 
African woman has ever stood beside 
the man in all his labors and struggles) 
were compelled to stand by and look on. 
The crowd of fellow South Africans 
who stood by them believed, 

HOPED AGAINST HOPE, 

to the last moment, that a reprieve 
would come. Lord Charles Somerset 
sent none, and the tragedy was com- 
pleted. The place is called to-day 
"Schlachter's Nek," or "Butcher's 
Ridge." Every South African child 
knows the story. Technically, any gov- 
ernment has the right to hang those 
w^ho rise against its rule. Superficially 
it is a short way of ending a difficulty 
for all governments. Historically it 



The South African Question. 29 

has often been found to be the method 
for perpetrating them. We may sub- 
merge for a moment that which rises 
again more formidably for its blood 
bath. The mistake made by Lord 
Charles Somerset in 1815 was as the 
mistake would have been by President 
Kruger if, in 1896, instead of exercis- 
ing the large prerogative of mercy and 
magnanimity, he had destroyed the 
handful of conspirators who attempted 
to destroy the State. Both would have 
been within their legal right, but the 
Transvaal would have failed to find 
that path which runs higher than the 
path of mere law and leads towards 
light. Fortunately for South Africa 
our little Republic found it. 

The reign of stern military rule at 
the Cape had this effect, that men and 
women, with a sore in their proud 



30 The South African Question. 

hearts, continued to move away from 
a controlling power that did not under- 
stand them. Some moved across the 
Orange River and joined the old 
*'Voortrekkers" that had already gone 
into that country which is now the Free 
State. England kept a certain virtual 
sovereignty over that territory, till, in 
1854, she grew weary of the expense 
it cost her, and withdrew from it in 
spite of the representations of certain 
of its inhabitants who sent a deputation 
to England to request her to retain it. 
Thereupon the folk organized an inde- 
pendent State and Government ; and the 
little land, peopled mainly by men of 
Dutch descent, but largely intermingled 
with English who lived with them on 
terms of the greatest affection and 
unity, has become one of the most 



The South African Question. 31 

PROSPEROUS, WELL-GOVERNED AND 
PEACEFUL 

communities on earth. Others, much 
the larger part of the people, moved 
further; they crossed the Vaal River, 
and in that wild northern land, where 
no Englishman's foot had passed, they 
founded after some years the gallant 
little Republic we all know to-day as 
the Transvaal. How that Republic 
was founded is a story we all know. 
Alone, unbacked by any great Im- 
perial or national power, with their old 
flint-lock guns in their hands as their 
only weapons, with wife and children, 
they passed into that yet untrodden 
land. The terrible story of their strug- 
gles, the death of Piet Retief and his 
brave followers, killed by treachery by 
the Zulu Chief, Dingaan, the victory of 
the survivors over him, which is still 



32 The South African Question. 

commemorated by their children as 
Dingaan's Day, the whole, perhaps, the 
most thrilling record of the struggle 
and suffering of a people in founding 
their State that the world can any- 
where produce. Paul Kruger can still 
remember how, after that terrible fight, 
women and children left alone in the 
fortified laager, he himself being but a 
child, they carried on bushes to fortify 
the laager, women with children in 
their arms, or pregnant, laboring with 
strength of men to entrench themselves 
against evil worse than death. Here in 
the wilderness they planted their homes, 
and founded their little State. Men 
and Vv^omen are still living who can re- 
member how, sixty years ago, the spot 
w^here the great mining cam.p of Jo- 
hannesburg now stands was a great 



The South African Question. 33 

silence where they drew up their wagon 
and planted their little home, and 

FOUGHT INCH BY INCH 

with wild beasts to reclaim the desert. 
In this great northern land, which no 
white man had entered or desired, they 
planted their people, and loving it as 
men only can love the land they have 
suffered and bled for, the gallant little 
Republic they raised they love to-day as 
the Swiss loves his mountain home and 
the Hollander his dykes. It is theirs, 
the best land on earth to them. 

They had fought not for money but 
for homes for their wives and children ; 
when they battled, the wives reloaded 
the old flint-lock guns and handed them 
down from the front chest of their 
wagon for the men who stood around 
defending them. It was a wild free 



34 The South African Question. 

fight, on even terms; there were no 
Maxim guns to mow down ebony fig- 
ures by the hundred at the turn of a 
handle ; a free even stand up fight ; and 
there were times when it ahnost seemed 
the assagai would overcome the old 
flint-lock, and the voortrekkers would 
be swept away. The panther and the 
jaguar rolled together on the ground, 
and, if one conquered instead of the 
other, it was yet a fair fight, and South 
Africa has no reason to be ashamed of 
the way either her black men or her 
white men fought it. 

If it be asked, has the Dutch South 
African always dealt gently and gen- 
erously with the native folks with 
whom he came into contact, we answer, 
'^No, he has not" — neither has any 
other white race of whom we have 
record in history. He kept slaves in 



The South African Question. 35 

the early days ! Yes, and a century ago 
England wished to make war on her 
American subjects in Virginia for re- 
fusing to take the slaves she sent. 
There was a time when we might have 
vaunted some superiority in the Eng- 
lish-African method of dealing with the 
native. 

THAT DAY IS PAST. 

The terrible events of the last five years 
in South Africa have left us silent. 
There is undoubtedly a score laid 
against us on this matter, Dutch and 
English South Africans alike; for the 
moment it is in abeyance ; in fifty or a 
hundred years it will probably be pre- 
sented for payment as other bills are, . 
and the white man of Africa will have 
to settle it. It has been run up as heav- 
ily north of the Limpopo as south ; and 
when our sons stand up to settle it, it 



36 The South African Questioisi. 

will be Dutchmen and Englishmen to- 
gether who have to pay for the sins of 
their fathers. 

Such is the history of our fehow 
South Africans of Dutch extraction, 
who to-day cover South Africa from 
Capetown to the Limpopo. In the Cape 
Colony, and increasingly in the two Re- 
publics, are found enormous numbers 
of cultured and polished Dutch- 
descended South Africans, using Eng- 
lish as their daily form of speech, and 
in no way distinguishable from the rest 
of the nineteenth century Europeans. 
Our most noted judges, our most elo- 
quent lawyers, our most skillful physi- 
cians, are frequently men of this blood ; 
the lists of the yearly examinations of 
our Cape University are largely filled 
with Dutch names, and women, as well 
as men, rank high in the order of merit. 



The South African Question. 37 

It would sometimes almost seem as if 
the long repose the people has had from 
the heated life of cities, with the large 
tax upon the nervous system, had sent 
them back to the world of intellectual 
occupations with more than the ordi- 
nary grasp of power. In many cases 
they go home to Europe to study, and 
doubtless their college life and English 
friendships bind Britain close to their 
hearts as to ours who are English-born. 
The present State Attorney of the 
Transvaal is a man who has taken 
some of the highest honors Cambridge 
can bestow. Besides, there exist still 
our old simple farmers or Boers, found 
in the greatest perfection in the mid- 
land districts of the Colony, in the 
Transvaal and Free State, who consti- 
tute a large part of the virile backbone 
of South Africa. Clinging to their old 



38 The South Afiiican Question. 

seventeenth century faiths and man- 
ners, and speaking their African taal, 
they are yet tending to pass rapidly 
away, displaced by their own cultured 
modern children; but they still form a 
large and powerful body. Year by 
year the lines dividing the South Afri- 
cans from their more lately arrived 
English-descent brothers are 

PASSING AWAY. 

Love, not figuratively but literally, is 
obliterating the hne of distinction; 
month by month, week by week, one 
might say hour by hour, men and wom- 
en of the two races are meeting. In the 
Colony there are few families which 
have not their Dutch or English con- 
nections by marriage; in another gen- 
eration the fusion will be complete. 
There will be no Dutchmen then and 



The South African Question. 39 

no Englishmen in South Africa, but 
only the great blended South African 
people of the future, speaking the Eng- 
lish tongue, and holding in reverend 
memory its founders of the past, 
whether Dutch or English. Already, 
but for the sorrowful mistakes of the 
last years, the line of demarcation 
would have faded out of sight ; external 
impediments may tend to delay it, but 
they can never prevent this fusion ; we 
are one people. In thirty years' time, 
the daughter of the man who landed 
yesterday in South Africa will carry 
at her heart the child of a de Villiers, 
and the son of the Cornish miner who 
lands this week will have given the 
name of her English grandmother to 
his daughter, whose mother was a le 
Roux. There will be nothing in forty 



40 The South African Question. 

years but the great blended race of 
Africans. 

^ >Ic :|< ^ ^ ^ ^ 

These South Africans, together with 
those of EngHsh descent, but who have 
been more than two generations in the 
country and have had no — or very Httle 
— personal and intimate knowledge and 
intercourse with England, may be 
taken as standing on one side of us. 
They are before all things South Afri- 
cans. They have — both Dutch and 
English — in many cases a deep and sin- 
cere affection for the English language, 
English institutions, and a sincere af- 
fection for England herself. They are 
grateful to her for her watch over their 
seas ; and were a Russian fleet to ap- 
pear in Table Bay to-morrow and at- 
tempt to land troops, it would fly as 
quickly from Dutch as English bullets. 



The South African Question. 4l 

Neither Dutch nor EngHsh South Afri- 
cans desire to see any other power in- 
stalled in the place of England. Cul- 
tured Dutch and English Africans alike 
are fed on English literature, and Eng- 
land is their intellectual home. Even 
with our simplest Dutch-descent Afri- 
cans the mem.ories of 

THE OLD BITTER DAYS 

had almost faded, when the ghastly 
events, which are too well known to 
need referring to, awoke the old ache 
at the heart a few years ago. But even 
they would see quietly no other power 
standing in the place of England. "It 
is a strange thing," said a well-known 
Dutch South African to us twenty-one 
years ago, ''that when I went tO' Eu- 
rope to study I went to Holland, and 
loved the land and the people, but I felt 



42 The South African Question. 

a stranger; it was the same in Ger- 
many, the same in France. But when 
I landed in England I said, 'I am at 
home !' " That man was once a pas- 
sionate lover of England, but he is now 
a heart-sore man. There have been 
representatives of England in South 
Africa who have been loved as dearly 
by the Dutch as by the English. When 
a few years ago there was a talk of Sir 
George Grey visiting South Africa on 
his way home from New Zealand to 
England, old grey-headed Dutchmen 
in the Free State expressed their re- 
solve to take one more long train jour- 
ney and go down to Capetown only 
once more to shake the hand of the old 
man who more than forty years before 
had been Governor of the Cape Colony. 
So deeply had a great Englishman, up- 
holding the loftiest traditions of Eng- 



The South African Question. 43 

lish justice and humanity, endeared 
himself to the hearts of South Africans. 
'^God's EngUshman"— not of the Stock 
Exchange and the GatUng gun, but of 
the great heart. 

But great as is the bond between 
South Africans, whether Dutch or 
EngHsh, and England, caused by lan- 
guage, sentiments, interest and the 
noble record left by those large Eng- 
lishmen who have labored among us, 
the South African pure and simple, 
whether English or Dutch, cannot feel 
to England just as we do. Their ma- 
terial interest may bind them to Eng- 
land as much as it binds us, but that 
deep passion for her honor, the con- 
sciousness that she represents a large 
spiritual factor in our lives, which, once 
gone, nothing replaces for us ; that her 
right-doing is ours, and her wrong- 



44 The South African Question. 

doing is also ours ; that in a manner her 
flag does not represent anything we 
have an interest in, or even that we 
love, but that in a curious way it is 
ourselves — this they cannot know. 
Therefore, while on our side we are 
connected with them by our affection 
for South Africa and our resolute de- 
sire for its good, our position remains 
not exactly as theirs. Our standpoint 
is at once broader and more impartial 
in dealing with South African ques- 
tions, in that we are bound by two-fold 
sympathies. 

On the other hand of us, who are at 
once South Africans and Englishmen, 
stand in South Africa another body of 
individuals who are not South African, 
in any sense or only partially, but to 
whom from our peculiar position we 
also stand closely bound. 



The South African Question. 45 

Ever since the time when England 
took over the Cape, there has been 
slowly entering the country a thin 
stream of new^ settlers, English main- 
ly, but largely reinforced by people of 
other nationalities. Eighty years ago, 
in 1820, a comparatively large body of 
Englishmen arrived at once, and are 
known as the British Settlers. They 
settled at first mainly in Albany, and 
certain of their descendants are to-day, 
in some senses, almost as truly and 
typically South African as the older 
Dutch settlers. 

THEIR LOVE FOR AFRICA 

is intense. Some years later a large 
body of Germans were brought to the 
Kingwilliams town division of South 
Africa. They, too, became farmers, 
and their descendants are already true 



46 The South African Question. 

South Africans. For the rest, for 
years men continually dribbled in slow- 
ly and singly from other countries. 
Whether they came out in search of 
health, as clergymen, missionaries, or 
doctors, or in search of manual employ- 
ment, or as farmers, they almost all be- 
came, or tended to become almost im- 
mediately, South Africans. They set- 
tled in the land permanently among 
people who were permanent inhabit- 
ants, they often married women born in 
South Africa, and their roots soon sank 
deeply into it. They brought us no 
new problem to South Africa. They 
have settled among us, living as we 
live, sharing our lives and interests. It 
is said that it takes thirty years to make 
a South African, and in a manner this 
is true. Even now, more especially in 
times of stress or danger, it is easy to 



The South African Question 47 

distinguish the African-born man from 
the man of whatever race and however 
long in the country who has not been 
born here. But in the main these new- 
comers have become South Africans 
with quickness and to an astonishing 
degree, and coming in in driblets they 
were, so to speak, easily digested by 
South Africa. 

But during the last few years 

A NEW PHENOMENON HAS STARTED 

up in South African life. The discov- 
ery of vast stores of mineral wealth in 
South Africa, more especially gold, has 
attracted suddenly to its shores a large 
population which is not and cannot, at 
least at once, be South African. This 
body is known under the name of the 
Uitlanders (literally ''Foreigners" ). 
Through a misfortune, and by no 



48 The South African Question. 

fault of its own, the mass of this gold 
has been discovered mainly along the 
Witwatersrand, within the territory of 
the Transvaal Republic, and more espe- 
cially at the spot where the great min- 
ing camp of Johannesburg now stands, 
thus throwing upon the little Republic 
the main pressure of the new arrivals. 
To those who know the great mining 
camps of Klondike and Western Amer- 
ica, it is perhaps not necessary to de- 
scribe Johannesburg. Here are found 
that diverse and many-shaded body of 
humans, who appear wherever in the 
world gold is discovered. The China- 
man with his pigtail, the Indian Coolie, 
the manly Kafir, and the Half-caste ; all 
forms of dark and colored folk are 
here, and outnumber considerably the 
white. Nor is the white population less 
multifarious and complex. On first 



The South African Question. 49 

walking the streets, one has a strange 
sense of having left South Africa, and 
being merely in some cosmopolitan cen- 
ter, which might be anywhere where all 
nations and colors gather round the yel- 
low king. Russian Jews and Poles are 
here by thousands, seeking in South 
Africa the freedom from oppression 
that was denied that much-wronged 
race of men in their own birth-land; 
Cornish and Northumberland miners; 
working men from all parts of the 
earth; French, German and English 
tradesmen; while on the Stock Ex- 
change men of every European nation- 
ality are found, though the Jew pre-, 
dominates. The American strangers 
are not large in number, but are repre- 
sented by perhaps the most cultured and 
enlightened class in the camp, the min- 
ing engineer and lar^e importers of 



50 The South African Question. 

mining machinery being often of that 
race ; our lawyers and doctors are of all 
nationalities, while in addition to all 
foreigners, there is a certain admixture 
of English and Dutch South Africans. 
In the course of a day one is brought 
into contact with men of every species. 
Your household servant may be a Kafir, 
your washerwoman is a Half-caste, 
your butcher is a Hungarian, your bak- 
er English, the man who soles your 
boots a German, you buy your vegeta- 
bles and fruit from an Indian Coolie, 
your coals from the Chinaman round 
the corner, your grocer is a Russian 
Jew, your dearest friend an American. 
This is an actual, and not an imaginary, 
description. Here are found the most 
noted prostitutes of Chicago; and that 
sad sisterhood created by the disloca- 
tion of our yet uncoordinated civiliza- 



The South African Question. 51 

tion, and known in Johannesburg un- 
der the name of continental women, 
have thronged here in hundreds from 
Paris and the rest of Europe. Gamb- 
Hng, as in all mining camps, is rife; 
not merely men but even women put 
their money into the totalisator, and 

A LOW FEVER OF ANXIETY 

for chance wealth feeds on us. Crimes 
of violence are not unknown; but, if 
one may speak with authority who has 
known only one other great mining 
center in its early condition, and whose 
information on this matter has there- 
fore been gathered largely from books, 
Johannesburg compares favorably, and 
very favorably, with other large min- 
ing camps in the same stage of their 
existence. The life of culture and im- 
personal thought is largely and of 



52 The South African Question. 

necessity among a new and nomadic 
population absent; art and science are 
of necessity unrepresented; but a gen- 
eral alertness and keenness character- 
izes our population. In the bulk of our 
miners and working men, of our young 
men in banks and houses of business, 
we have a large mass of solid, intel- 
ligent, and invaluable social material 
which counter-balances that large mass 
of human flotsam and jetsam found in 
this, as in all other mining camps ; while 
among our professional men and min- 
ing officials is found a large amount of 
the highest professional knowledge and 
efficiency. Happy would it be for the 
gallant little Transvaal Republic, and 
well for South Africa as a whole, if 
the bulk of this little human nature 
could become ours forever, if they were 
here to stay with us, drink out of our 



The South African Question. 53 

cup and sup out of our platter. But in 
most cases this is not so. The bulk of 
the population, and especially its most 
valuable and cultured elements, are 
here temporarily ; as persons who go to 
Italy or the south of France for health 
or sunshine, who, even when they go 
year after year, or buy villas and settle 
there for a time, yet go to seek merely 
health and sunshine, not strike root 
there; and as men go to Italy for 
health and sunshine, the bulk of us here 
come to seek gold or a temporary liveli- 
hood, and for nothing more. Even our 
miners and working men in Johannes- 
burg, the most stable and possibly per- 
manent element in our population, have, 
in many instances, their wives and fam- 
ilies in Cornwall or elsewhere; and 
when they have them here they still 
think of the return home for good in 



54 The South African Question. 

after years; while with the wealthier 
classes this is practically universal. Not 
only have our leading mining engineers 
and the great speculators not the slight- 
est intention of staying in Johannes- 
burg permanently; most have their 
wives and families in England, Amer- 
ica, or on the Continent, and project as 
soon as possible a retirement from busi- 
ness, and return to the fashionable cir- 
cles of Europe or America. Even 
among South African-born men the 
large majority of us intend returning 
to our own more lovely birthplaces and 
homes in the Colony sooner or later; 
and the only element which will prob- 
ably form any integral part of the 
South African nation of the future and 
become subject to the Transvaal Re- 
public is the poorer, which, from the 
larger advantages for labor here, will 



The South African Question. 55 

be unable to return to its natural home. 
The nomadic population of Johannes- 
burg undoubtedly consists of men who 
are brave and loyal citizens in their 
own States and nations. To-morrow, 

IF AMERICA WERE IN DANGER, 

probably almost every American citi- 
zen would troop back to her bosom, and 
spend not only life, but the wealth he 
had gained in South Africa from South 
African soil, in defending her. Every 
German would go home to the Father- 
land ; every Englishman, every French- 
man, would, as all brave men in the 
world's history have done, when the cry 
arises, "The birthland in danger !" The 
few Spaniards here trooped back to 
Spain as soon as the news of war ar- 
rived. 

One of the most brilliant and able of 



56 



The South African Question. 



English journalists (a man whose opin- 
ion on any subject touching his own 
land we would receive almost with the 
reverence accruing to the man who 
speaks of a subject he knows well and 
has studied with superior abilities ; but 
who had been only a few months in our 
land, and, therefore, had not full grasp 
of either our people or our problems, 
which from their complexity and many- 
sidedness are subjects for a life's devo- 
tion) that man, three and a half years 
ago, when brave little Jameson — brave, 
however mistaken — was sent in to cap- 
ture the mines of Johannesburg for his 
V master, and when the great mixed pop- 
ulation of Johannesburg, Germans and 
French, English and Jews, Arabs and 
Chinamen, refused to arise and go to 
aid him, and when hundreds of Eng- 
lishmen, Cornishmen and others fled 



The South African Question. 57 

from Johannesburg, fearing that Jame- 
son might arrive and cause a dis- 
turbance — said that Johannesburg 
would be known forever in history by 
the name of Judasburg! and that the 
Cornish and other EngHshmen who fled 
from the place were poltroons and 
cowards. But he was mistaken. 

JOHANNESBURG IS NOT JUDASBURG, 

and the Englishmen who fled were not 
poltroons. There ran in them blood as 
brave as any in England, and if to-mor- 
row a hostile force attacked their birth- 
land, those very Cornish miners and 
English working men would die in the 
last ditch defending their land. Those 
men were strangers here ; they came to 
earn the bread they could with diffi- 
culty win in their own land ; they were 
friendly treated by South Africa and 



58 The South African Questioi*. 

made money here ; but were they bound 
to die in a foreign land for causes which 
they neither knew nor cared for ? 

One thing only can possibly justify 
war and the destruction of our fellows 
to the enlightened and humane denizen 
of the nineteenth century ; the unavoid- 
able conviction that by no other means 
can we preserve our own life and free- 
dom from a stronger power, or defend 
a weaker. state or individual from a 
stronger. Nothing can even palliate it 
but so intense a conviction of a right so 
great to be maintained that we are will- 
ing, not merely to hire other men to 
fight and die for us, but to risk our own 
lives, 

A LIFE FOR A LIFE. 

This the Englishmen in Johannes- 
burg and foreigners of all nations could 
not possibly feel. They were not more 



The South African Question. 59 

bound to die to obtain control of the ^ 
gold mines of Johannesburg for a man . 
already wealthy or his confederates, 
than to assist South Africans in defend- 
ing them; or than we who visit the 
south of France or Italy for health 
should feel ourselves bound to remain 
and die if war breaks out between the 
Bonapartists and the Republicans, or 
the Pope and the King. If by a pro- 
cess of abstract thought we have ar- 
rived at a strong conviction of a right 
or human justice to be maintained by 
a cause with which we have no prac- 
tical concern, we may feel morally 
compelled to take a part in it; but no 
man can throw it in our teeth if we 
refuse to die in a strange land for 

A CAUSE THAT IS NOT OURS. 

The Englishmen and others who re- 



60 The South African Question. 

fused to fight in Johannesburg, or fled 
rather than run the risk of remaining, 
pursued the only course open to wise 
and honorable men. Had they resolved 
to remain permanently in South Africa, 
and to become citizens of the Transvaal 
Republic, the case might have been 
otherwise. As it was, they could not 
run a knife into the heart of a people 
which had hospitably received them, 
and attempt to destroy a land in which 
they had found nothing but greater 
wealth and material comfort than in 
their own ; and they could also not en- 
ter upon a deadly raid for a man whom 
personally the workers of Johannes- 
burg cared nothing for, and with whom 
they had not a sympathy or interest in 
common. In leaving Johannesburg and 
refusing to fight, they pursued the only 



The South African Question. 61 

course left open to them by justice and 
honor. 

Rightly to understand the problem 
before the little Transvaal Republic to- 
day, it is necessary for Englishmen to 
imagine not merely that, within the 
space of ten or twelve years, forty mill- 
ions of Russians, Frenchmen and Ger- 
mans should enter England, not in 
driblets and in time extending over half 
a century, so that they might, in a 
measure, be absorbed and digested into 
the original population, but instantan- 
eously and at once ; not merely, that the 
large bulk of them did not intend to re- 
main in England, and were there mere- 
ly to extract wealth; not merely, that 
the bulk of this wxalth was exported at 
once to other countries enriching Rus- 
sia, France and Germany out of the 
products of English soil ; that would be 



/ 



62 The South African Question. 

comparatively a small matter — ^but, that 
the bulk of the wealth extracted was in 
the hands of a few persons, and that 
these persons were opposed to the con- 
tinued freedom and independence of 
England, and were attempting by the 
use of the wealth they extracted from 
England to stir up Russia and France 
against her, that through the loss of 
her freedom they might the better ob- 
tain the command of her wealth and 
lands. When the Englishman has 
vividly drawn this future for himself, 
he will hold, as nearly as is possible, in 
a nutshell an image of the problem 
which the people and government of 
the Transvaal Republic are called on 
to face to-day ; and we put it straightly 
to him whether this problem is not 
one of 



The South African Question. 63 

INFINITE COMPLEXITY AND 
DIFFICULTY ? 

Much unfortunate misunderstanding 
has arisen from the simple use of the 
terms "capitahst" and ''monopohst" in 
the discussion of South African mat- 
ters. Without the appending of ex- 
planation, they convey a false impres- 
sion. These terms, so familiar to the 
students of social phenomena in Eu- 
rope and America, are generally used 
in connection with a larger, but a quite 
distinct body of problems. The terms 
''capitalism," ''monopolist," and "mil- 
lionaire" are now generally associated 
wdth the question of the forming of 
"trusts," "corners," etc., and the 
question whether it is desirable that so- 
ciety should so organize itself that one 
man may easily obtain possession of 
twenty millions, while the bulk of 



64 The South African Question. 

equally intelligent and equally laborious 
men obtain little or nothing from the 
labor of humanity. This question is a 
world-wide question; it is not one in 
any sense peculiarly South African; it 
is a world-wide problem, which, as the 
result of much thought, careful consid- 
eration and many experiments, the na- 
tions of the civilized world will be 
called to adjudicate upon during the 
twentieth century; but it is not the 
question with which South Africa 
stands face to face at this moment. The 
question before us is not : Shall one 
South African possess twenty millions, 
live in his palace, live on champagne, 
have his yacht in Table Bay, and deck 
women with a hundred thousand 
pounds' vv^orth of jewels, while the 
South African next door has nothing? 
This is not our question. Our problem 



The South African Question. Go 

is not the problem of America. In 
America there are many individuals 
possessing wealth amounting to many 
millions, but when the United States in 
their entirety is taken the £40,000,000 
of the richest individual sink to noth- 
ing ; and, were it the desire of the rich- 
est millionaire in the States 

TO CORRUPT AND PURCHASE 

the whole population for political pur- 
poses, he could not pay so much as £1 a 
head to the 80,000,000 inhabitants of 
the country. Further, the bulk of 
American millionaires are American! 
They differ in no respect, except in 
their possession of large wealth, in in- 
terest or affections, from the shoemak- 
er in the alley or the farmer at his 
plough. They are American citizens; 
their fate is bound up with that of the 



66 The South African Question. 

land they live in; their ambitions are 
American. If a great misfortune should 
overtake America to-morrow there is 
no reason to suppose that the heart of 
a Rockefeller or a Vanderbilt would 
not ache as that of the simplest cowboy 
in the States. When they die, it is to 
American institutions that they leave 
their munificent donations, and the col- 
leges and public institutions of America 
are endowed by them. The mass even 
of that wealth they expend on them- 
selves is expended in America, and, 
whether they will or no, returns to the 
people of the country in many forms. 
The millionaires of America are and re- 
main Americans ; and the J. Gould who 
should expend his millions in stirring 
up war between the North and South, 
or in urging England to attack and slay 
American citizens, would be dealt with 



The South African Question. 67 

by his fellow-subjects, whether mil- 
lionaires or paupers, with expedition. 
The question whether the conditions 
which lead to such vast accretions of 
fortune in the hands of private indi- 
viduals is a desirable one and of social 
benefit is an open one, and a fair field 
for impartial discussion ; but, whatever 
decision is arrived at with regard to 
millionaires and private monopoly as 
they exist in Europe or the United 
States, it has little or no bearing on the 
problem of South Africa, which is to- 
tally distinct. 

South Africa is a young country, and 
taken as a whole it is an arid, barren 
country agriculturally. Our unrivalled 
climate, our subHme and rugged natural 
scenery, 



68 The South African Question. 

THE JOY AND PRIDE 

of the South African heart, is largely 
the result of this very aridity and rocki- 
ness. Parts are fruitful, but we have 
no vast corn-producing plains, which 
for generations may be cultivated al- 
most without replenishing, as in Rus- 
sia and America ; we have few facilities 
for producing those vast supplies of 
flesh which are poured forth from. Aus- 
tralia and New Zealand; already we 
import a large portion of the grain and 
flesh we consume. We may, with care, 
become a great fruit-producing coun- 
try, and create some rich and heavy 
wines, but, on the whole, agriculturally, 
we are, and must remain, as compared 
with most other countries, a poor na- 
tion. Nor have we any great inland 
lakes, seas, and rivers, or arms of the 
sea, to enable us to become a great 



The South African Question. 69 

maritime or carrying people. One 
thing only we have which saves us from 
being the poorest country on the earth, 
and should make us one of the richest. 
,We have our vast stores of mineral 
wealth, of gold and diamonds, and 
probably of other wealth yet unfound. 
This is all we have. Nature has given 
us nothing else; we are a poor people 
but for these. Out of the veins run- 
ning through rocks and hills, and the 
mud-beds, heavy with jewels, that lie 
in our arid plains, must be reared and 
created our great national institutions, 
our colleges and museums, our art gal- 
leries and universities; by means of 
these our system of education must be 
extended ; and on the material side, out 
of these must the great future of South 
Africa be built up — or not at all. The 
discovery of our mineral wealth came 



70 The South African Question. 

somewhat suddenly upon us. We were 
not prepared for its appearance by wise 
legislative enactments, as in New Zea- 
land or some other countries. Before 
the people of South Africa as a whole 
had had time to wake up to the truth 
and to learn the first 

GREAT AND TERRIBLE LESSON^ 

our diamonds should have taught us 
the gold mines of the Transvaal were 
discovered. 

We South Africans, Dutch and Eng- 
lish alike, are a curious folk, strong, 
brave, with a terrible intensity and per- 
severance, but we are not a sharp people 
well versed in the movements of the 
speculative world. In a few years the 
entire wealth of South Africa, its mines 
of gold and diamonds, its coal fields, 
and even its most intractable lands, 



The South African Question. 71 *^ 

from the lovely Hex River Valley to ' 
Magaliesberg, had largely passed into v 
the hands of a very small knot of spec- , 
iilators. In hardly any instances are 
they South Africans. That they were 
not South African-born would in itself 
matter less than nothing, had they 
thrown in their lot with us, if in sym- 
pathies, hopes, and fears they were one 
with us. They are not. It is not mere- 
ly that the wealth which should have 
made us one of the richest peoples in the 
world has left us one of the poorest, 
and is exported to other countries, that 
it builds palaces in Park Lane, buys 
yachts in the Mediterranean, fills the 
bags of the croupiers at Monte Carlo, 
decks foreign women with jewels, while 
our citizens toil in poverty; this is a 
small matter. But those men are not 
of us! That South Africa we love 



72 The South African Question. 

whose great future is dearer to us than 
our own interests, in the thought of 
whose great and noble destiny Hes the 
source of our patriotism and highest in- 
spiration, for whose good in a far dis- 
tant future we, Dutch and Enghsh 
ahke, would sacrifice all in the present 
— this future is no more to them than 
the future of the Galapagos Islands. 
We are a hunting ground to them, a 
field for extracting wealth, for 

BUILDING UP FAME AND FORTUNE ] 

nothing more. This matter does not 
touch the Transvaal alone; from the 
lovely Hex River Valley, east, west, 
north, and south, our lands are being 
taken from us, and passing into the 
hands of men who not only care nothing 
for South Africa, but apply the vast 
wealth they have drawn from South Af- 



The South African Question. 73 

rican soil in an attempt to corrupt our ^ 
public life and put their own nominees - 
into our parliaments, to grasp the reins ^y 
of power, that their wealth may yet 
more increase. Is it strange that from 
the hearts of South Africans, English 
and Dutch alike, there is arising an ex- 
ceedingly great and bitter cry: 'We 
have sold our birthright for a mess of 
pottage ! The lands, the mineral wealth 
which should have been ours to build 
up the great Africa of the future has 
gone into strange hands ! And they 
use the gold they gain out of us to en- ' 
slave us; they strike at our hearts witli; 
a sword gilded with South African! 
gold! While the gold and stones re- 
mained undiscovered in the bosom; of 
our earth, it was saved up for us and 
for our grandchildren to build up the 
great future ; it is going from us never 



74 The South African Question. 

to return; and when they have rifled 
our earth and picked the African bones 
bare as the vultures clear the carcass 
of their prey, they will leave us with the 
broken skeleton!" 

I think there is no broad-minded and 
sympathetic man who can hear this cry 
without sympathy. The South African 
question is far other than the question : 
Shall one man possess twenty millions 
while his brother possesses none ? It is 
one far deeper. 

Nevertheless, there is another side to 
the question. Nations, like individuals, 
suffer, and must pay the price, yet more 
for their ignorance and stupidity than 
their wilful crimes. He who sits supine 
and intellectually inert, while great evils 
are being accomplished, sins wholly as 
much as he whose positive action pro- 
duces them, and must pay the same 



The South African Question. 75 

price. The man at the helm, who goes 
to sleep cannot blame the rock when 
the ship is thrown upon it, though it be 
torn asunder. He should have known 
the rock was there, and steered clear of 
it. It is perhaps natural 

A GREAT BITTERNESS 

should have arisen in our hearts to- 
wards the men who have disinherited 
us; but is it always just? Personally, 
and in private life, they may be far from 
being inhuman or unjust; they may be 
rich in such qualities ; at most they re- 
main men and brothers who differ in no 
way from the majority of us. We 
made certain laws and regulations; 
they took advantage of them for their 
own success; they have but pursued 
the universal laws of the business 
world, and of the struggle of competi- 



76 The South African Question. 

tion. It was we who did not defend 
ourselves, and must take the conse- 
quences. As long as any of these men 
merely use the wealth they extract 
from Africa for their own pleasures and 
interest, we have not much to complain 
of, and must bear the fruit of our folly. 
The speculators who rule in Mashona- 
land were wiser than we ; they ordained 
that 50 per cent of all gold mining 
profits should go to the government, 
and they retained all diamonds found as 
a government monopoly. We were not 
wise enough to do so, and the nation 
must suffer. But poverty is not the 
worst thing that can overtake an indi- 
vidual or a nation. In that harsh 
school the noblest lessons and the 
sturdiest virtues are learnt. The great- 
est nations, like the greatest individuals, 
have often been the poorest ; and with 



The South African Question. 77 

wealth comes often what is more ter- 
rible than poverty — corruption. Not all 
the millionaires of Europe can prevent 
one man of genius being born in this 
land to illuminate it; not all the gold 
of Africa can keep us from being the 
bravest, freest nation on earth; no man 
living can shut out from our eyes the 
glories of our African sky, or kill one 
throb of our exultant joy in our great 
African plains ; nor can all earth pre- 
vent us from growing into a great, free, 
wise people. The faults of the past we 
cannot undo; but 

THE FUTURE IS OURS. 

But when the men, who came penniless j 
to our shores and have acquired millions 
out of our substance, are not content 
with their gains ; when they seek to dye 
the South African soil which has re- 



<8 The South African Question. 

ceived them with the blood of its citi- 
zens — when they seek her freedom — 
the matter is otherwise. 

This is the problem, the main weight 
of which has fallen on the little South 
African Republic. It was that little 
ship which received the main blow 
when eighty thousand souls of all na- 
tionalities leaped aboard at once; and 
gallantly the taut little craft, if for a 
moment she shivered from stem to 
stern, has held on her course to shore, 
with all souls on board. 

We put it, not to the man in the 
street, who, for lack of time or interest, 
may have given no thought to such 
matters, but to all statesmen, of what- 
ever nationality, who have gone deeply 
into the problems of social structure 
and the practical science of government, 
and to all thinkers who have devoted 



The South African Question. 79 

time and study to the elucidation of so- 
cial problems and the structure of so- 
cieties and nations, whether the problem 
placed suddenly for solution before this 
little State does not exceed in complex- 
ity and difficulty that which it has al- 
most ever been a necessity that the peo- 
ple of any country in the past or pres- 
ent should deal with ? When we remem- 
ber how gravely is discussed the arrival 
of a few hundred thousand Chinamen 
in America, who are soon lost in the 
vast bulk of the population, as a handful 
of chaff is lost in a bag of corn ; when 
we recall the fact that the appearance 
in England of a few thousand labouring 
Polish and Russian Jews amidst a vast 
population, into which they will be ab- 
sorbed in less than two generations 
forming good and leal English subjects, 
has been solemnly adverted upon as 



80 The South African Question. 

A GREAT NATIONAL CALAMITY, 

and measures have been weightily dis- 
cussed for forcibly excluding them, it 
will assuredly be clear, to all impartial 
and truth loving minds, that the prob- 
lem which the Transvaal Republic has 
suddenly had to deal with is one of 
transcendent complexity and difficulty. 
We put it to all generous and just spir- 
its, whether of statesmen or thinkers, 
whether the little Republic does not de- 
serve our sympathy, the sympathy 
which wise minds give to all who have 
to deal with new and complex problems, 
where the past experience of humanity 
has not marked out a path — and wheth- 
er, if we touch the subject at all, it is 
not necessary that it should be in that 
large, impartial, truth-seeking spirit, in 
which humanity demands we should ap- 



The "^outh African Question. 81 

prf^ach all great social difficulties and 
questions ? 

We put it further to such intelligent 
minds as ha,ve impartially watched the 
action and endeavors of the little Re- 
public in dealing with its great prob- 
lems, whether, when all the many sides 
and complex conditions are considered, 
it has not manfully and wonderfully en- 
deavored to solve them ? 

It is sometimes said that when one 
stands looking down from the edge of 
this hill at the great mining camp of 
Johannesburg stretching beneath, with 
its heaps of white sand and debris 
mountains high, its mining chimneys 
belching forth smoke, with its seventy 
thousand Kafirs, and its eighty thous- 
and miCn and women, white or colored, 
of all nationalities gathered here in the 
space of a few years, on the spot where 



o% The South African Question. 

fifteen years ago the Boer's son guided 
his sheep to the water and the Boer's 
wife sat alone at evening at the house 
door to watch the sunset, we are look- 
ing upon one of the most wonderful 
spectacles on earth. And it is wonder- 
ful; but, as we look at it, the thought 
always arises within us of something 
more wonderful yet — the marvelous 
manner in which a little nation of sim- 
ple folk, living in peace in the land they 
loved, far from the rush of cities and 
the concourse of men, have risen to the 
difficulties of their condition ; how they, 
without instruction in statecraft, or tra- 
ditionary rules of policy, have risen to 
face their great difficulties, and have 
sincerely endeavored to meet them in a 
large spirit, and have largely succeeded. 
Nothing but that 



The South African Question. 83 

CURIOUS AND WONDERFUL INSTINCT 

for Statecraft and the organization and 
arrangement of new social conditions 
which seem inherent as a gift of the 
blood to all those peoples who took their 
rise in the little deltas on the northeast 
of the continent of Europe, where the 
English and Dutch peoples alike took 
their rise, could have made it possible. 
We do not say that the Transvaal Re- 
public has among its guides and rulers 
a Solon or a Lycurgus ; but it has to- 
day, among the men guiding its destiny, 
men of brave and earnest spirit, who 
are seeking manfully and profoundly to 
deal with the great problems before 
them in a wide spirit of humanity and 
justice. And, we do again repeat, that 
the strong sym.pathy of all earnest and 
thoughtful minds, not only in Africa, 
but in England, should be with them. 



84 The South African Question. 

Let us take as an example one of the 
simplest elements of the question, the 
enfranchisement of the new arrivals. 
Even those of us, who with the present 
writer are sometimes denominated "the 
fanatics of the franchise," who hold that 
that state is healthiest and strongest, 
in the majority of cases, in which every 
adult citizen, irrespective of sex or posi- 
tion, possesses a vote, base our assertioH 
on the fact that each individual forming 
an integral part of the community has 
their all at stake in that community; 
that the woman's stake is likely to be as 
iarge as the man's, and the poor man's 
as the rich; for each has only his all, 
his life ; and that their devotion to its 
future good, and their concern in its 
health is likely to be equal; that the 
state gains by giving voice to all its in- 
tegral parts. But the ground is cut 



The South African Question. 85 

from under our feet when a large mass 
of persons concerned are not integral 
portions of the State, but merely tem- 
porarily connected with it, have no in- 
terest in its remote future, and only a 
commercial interest in its present. We 
may hold (and we personally very 
strongly hold) that the moment a 
stranger lands in a country, however 
ignorant he may be of its laws, usages, 
and interests, if he intends to remain 
permanently in it, and incorporates all 
his life and interest with it, he becomes 
an integral part of the State, and should 
as soon as possible be given the power 
of expressing his will through its legis- 
lature ; but the 

PRACTICAL AND OBVIOUS DIFFICULTY 

at once arises of determining who, in 
an uncertain stream of strangers who 



86 The South African Question 

suddenly flow into a land, is so situated ! 
I may go to Italy, accompanied by two 
friends; we may hire the same house 
between us (to use a homely illustra- 
tion) ; there may be no external evi- 
dence of difference in our attitude; 
yet I may have determined to live 
and die in Italy; I may feel a most 
intense affection for its people and 
its institutions, and a great solici- 
tude over its future. The first man who 
accompanies me may feel perfectly in- 
different to land and people, and be 
there merely for health, leaving again 
as soon as it is restored. The second 
may be animated by an intense hatred 
of Italy and Italians ; he not only may 
not wish well to the nation, but may de- 
sire to see it downtrodden by Austria, 
and its inhabitants destroyed. By en- 
franchising me the moment I arrived, 



The South African Question. 87 

the Italian nation would gain a faith- 
ful and devoted citizen, who would sac- 
rifice all for her in time of danger, and 
devote thought in times of peace ; in en- 
franchising immediately the second 
man, they would perform an act entire- 
ly negative and indifferent without loss 
or gain either way; in enfranchising 
the third man, they would perform an 
act of minor social suicide. Yet it 
would be impossible at once, and from 
any superficial study to discover our 
differences ! 

THE GREAT SISTER REPUBLIC 

across the water has met these difficul- 
ties by instituting a probationary resi- 
dence of two years, after which by tak- 
ing a solemn oath renouncing all al- 
legiance to any foreign sovereign or 
land, more especially to the ruler of 



88 The South African Question. 

England and the English nation, and 
declaring their wish to live and die cit- 
izens of the United States, the new 
comers are, after a further residence of 
another three years, fully enfranchised, 
and become citizens of the American 
Republic. In this, as in many other 
cases, it would appear that the great 
Republic has struck on a wise and prac- 
tical solution to a complex problem ; and 
in this matter, as in many others, we, 
personally, should like to see the action 
of the great sister Republic followed. 
But thoughtful minds may suggest, on 
the other hand, that, while in America, 
at least at the present day, the newly 
enfranchised burgher receives but one- 
sixteen millionth of the State power and 
of governmental control on his enfran- 
chisement, in a small state like the 
Transvaal each new burgher receives 



The South African Question. 89 

over eight hundred timev«^ that power in 
the government and control of the 
country, and that this makes a serious 
difference in the importance of making 
sure of the loyalty and sincerity of your 
citizen before you enfranchise him. We 
see this, and there is something to be 
said for it. It has been held by many 
sincerely desirous of arriving at a just 
and balanced conclusion, that, in a Re- 
public situated as the Transvaal is, a 
longer residence and the votes of a cer- 
tain proportion of the already enfran- 
chised citizens are necessary before the 
vast rights conferred by citizenship in 
a small purely democratic State are 
granted. The terms for the enfranchise- 
ment for foreigners in England yield us 
no instructive analogy ; for, in a country 
with an hereditary sovereign and an 
hereditary Upper House the enfran- 



90 The South African Question. 

chised foreigner receives only a minute 
fraction of the power conferred on the 
elector in a pure democracy. The little 
Russian Jew who has a vote given him 
in London can never become the su- 
preme head of the State, can never sit 
in or vote for members of the Upper 
House, and receives only the minute 
fractional power of voting for members 
of the Lower. It is 

IN A PURE DEMOCRACY 

where the people are the sovereign and 
represent in themselves the hereditary 
ruler, the hereditary Upper House, and 
the Lower House combined, that the 
personnel of each accredited citizen be- 
comes all important. The greater the 
stability and immobility at one end of 
a State, the greater the mobility and in- 
stability which may be allowed at the 



The South African Question. 91 

other end, without endangering the sta- 
bihty of the State as a whole, or the 
heahhy performance of its functions. 
Even on this comparatively small ques- 
tion of the franchise it is evident that 
the problem before the little Transvaal 
Republic is one of much complexity, 
and on which minds broadly liberal and 
sincerely desirous of attaining to the 
wisest and most humane and most en- 
lightened judgment may sincerely dif- 
fer. 

Of those other and far more serious 
problems which the Republic faces in 
common with South Africa, there is no 
necessity here to speak further; the 
thoughtful mind may follow them out 
for itself. Time and experiment must 
be allowed for the balance of things to 
adjust themselves. 

South Africa has need of more cit- 



92 The South African Question. 

izens leal and true. Whoever enters 
South Africa and desires to become one 
of us, to drink from our cup and sup 
from our platter, to mix his seed with 
ours and build up the South Africa of 
the future — him let us receive with open 
arms. From great mixtures of races 
spring great peoples. The scorned and 
oppressed Russian Jew, landing here to- 
day, vivified by our fresh South Af- 
rican breezes, may yet be the progenitor 
of the Spinoza and Maimonides of the 
great future South Africa, who shall 
lead the world in philosophy and 
thought. The pale German cobbler who 
with his wife and children lands to- 
day, so he stays with us and becomes 
one with us, may yet be the father of 
the greater Hans Sachs of Africa ; and 
the half-starved Irish peasant become 
the forerunner of our future Burkes 



The South African Question. 93 

and William Porters. The rough Cor- 
nish miner, who is looking out with 
surprised eyes at our new South Afri- 
can world to-day, may yet give to us 
our greatest statesmen and noblest lead- 
er. The great African nation of the 
future will have its foundations laid on 
stones from many lands. Even to the 
Coolie and the Chinaman, so he comes 
among us, we personally should say: 
Stretch forth the hand of brotherhood. 
We may not desire him, we may not in- 
tentionally bring him among us, but, 
so he comes to remain with us, let South 
Africa be home to him. 

''Be not unmindful to entertain 
strangers, for some have thereby en- 
tertained angels unawares." 

* >K * 5j< ^ 

We, English South Africans of to- 



94 The South African Question. 

day, who are truly South African, lov- 
ing 

THE LAND OF OUR BIRTH, 

and men inhabiting it, yet bound by 
intense and loving ties, not only of in- 
tellectual affinity but of personal pas- 
sion, to the homeland from which our 
parents came, and where the richest 
formative years of our life were passed, 
we stand to-day midway between these 
two great sections of South African 
folk, the old who have been here long 
and the new who have only come; be- 
tween the home-land of our fathers and 
the love-land of our birth ; and it would 
seem as though, through no advantage 
of wisdom or intellectual knowledge on 
our part, but simply as the result of the 
accident of our position and of our dou- 
ble affections, we are fitted to fulfil a 
certain function at the present day, to 



The South African Question. 95 

Stand, as it were, as mediators and in- 
terpreters between those our position 
compels us to sympathize with and so 
understand, as they may not, perhaps, 
be able to understand each other. 

Especially at the present moment has 
arrived a time when it is essential that, 
however small we may feel is our in- 
herent fitness for the task, we should 
not shrink nor remain silent and in- 
active, but exert by word and action 
that peculiar function which our posi- 
tion invests us with. 

* * * 

If it be asked, why at this especial 
moment we feel it incumbent on us not 
to maintain silence, and what that is 
which compels our action and speech, 
the answer may be given in one word — • 
WAR! 

The air of South Africa is 



96 The South African Question. 

HEAVY WITH RUMORS; 

inconceivable, improbable, we refuse to 
believe them ; yet, again and again they 
return. 

There are some things the mind re- 
fuses seriously to entertain, as the man 
who has long loved and revered his 
mother would refuse to accept the as- 
sertion of the first passer-by that there 
was any possibility of her raising up 
her hand to strike his wife or destroy 
his child. But much repetition may at 
last awaken doubt; and the man may 
begin to look out anxiously for further 

evidence. 

^ ^ ^ 

We English South Africans are 
stunned; we are amazed; we say there 
can be no truth in it. Yet we begin to 
ask ourselves : ''What means this un- 
wonted tread of armed and hired sol- 



The South African Question. 97 

diers on South African soil ? Why are 
they here?" And the only answer that 
comes back to us, however remote and 
seemingly impossible is — WAR ! 

To-night we laugh at it, and to-mor- 
row when we rise up it stands before us 
again, the ghastly doubt — war! — war, 
and in South Africa! War — between 
white men and white ! War! — Why ? — 
Whence is the cause? — For whom? — 
For what ? — And the question gains no 
answer. 

We fall to considering, who gains by 
war? 

Has our race in Africa and our race 
in England interests so diverse that any 
calamity so cataclysmic can fall upon 
us, as war? Is any position possible, 
that could make necessary that mother 
and daughter must rise up in one hor- 
rible embrace, and rend, if it be pos- 



98 The South African Question. 

sible, each other's vital-s? . . Be- 
Heving it impossible, we fall to consid- 
ering, who is it gains by war ? 

There is peace to-day in the land ; the 
two great white races, day by day, hour 
by hour, are blending their blood, and 
both are mixing with the stranger. No 
day passes but from the veins of some 
Dutch South African woman the Eng- 
lish South African man's child is being 
fed ; not a week passes but the birth cry 
of the English South African woman's 
child gives voice to the Dutchman's off- 
spring; not an hour passes but on farm, 
and in town and village, Dutch hearts 
are winding about English 

AND ENGLISH ABOUT DUTCH. 

If the Angel of Death should spread his 
wings across the land and strike dead 
in one night every man and woman and 



The South African Question. 99 

child of either the Dutch or the Enghsh 
blood, leaving the other alive, the land 
would be a land of mourning. There 
would be not one household nor the 
heart of an African born man or wo- 
man that would not be weary with grief. 
We should weep the friends of our 
childhood, the companions of our early 
life, our grandchildren, our kindred, the 
souls who have loved us and whom we 
have loved. In destroying the one race 
he would have isolated the other. Time, 
the great healer of all differences, is 
blending us into a great mutual people, 
and love is moving faster than time. It 
is no growing hatred between Dutch 
and English South African born men 
and women that calls for war. On the 
lips of our babes we salute both races 
daily. 

Then we look round through the po- 



-CIS 



iOO The South African Question. 

litical world, and we ask ourselves: 
What great and terrible and sudden 
crime has been committed, what reck- 
less slaughter and torture of the inno- 
cents, that blood can alone wash out 
blood? 

And we find none. 

And still we look, asking what great 
and terrible difference has suddenly 
arisen, so mighty that the human intel- 
lect cannot solve it by means of peace, 
that the highest and noblest diplomacy 
falls powerless before it, and the wis- 
dom and justice of humanity cannot 
reach it, save by the mother's drawing 
a sword and planting it in the heart of 
the daughter ? 

We can find none. 

And again, we ask ourselves 



The South African Question. 101 
WHO GAINS BY WAR? 

What is it for ? Who is there that de- 
sires it? Do men shed streams of hu- 
man blood as children cut off poppy- 
heads to see the white juice flow? 

WHO GAINS BY WAR? 

Not England ! She has a great young 
nation's heart to lose. She has a cable 
of fellowship which stretches across the 
seas to rupture. She has treaties to vio- 
late. She has the great traditions of her 
past to part with. Whoever plays to 
win, she loses. 

WHO GAINS BY WAR? 

Not Africa ! The great young nation, 
quickening to-day to its first conscious- 
ness of life, to be torn and rent, and 
bear upon its limb, into its fully ripened 
manhood, the marks of the wounds^ — 
wounds from a mother's hands ! 



102 The South African Question. 
WHO GAINS BY WAR? 

Not the great woman whose eighty 
years to-night completes,* who would 
carry with her to her grave the remem- 
brance of the longest reign and the pur- 
est ; who would have that when the na- 
tions gather round her bier, the whisper 
should go round, 'That was a mother's 
hand; it struck no child." 

WHO GAINS BY WAR? 

Not the brave English soldier ; there 
are no laurels for them here. The dy- 
ing lad with hands fresh from the 
plough; the old man tottering to the 
grave, who seizes up the gun to die with 
it; the simple farmer who as he falls 
hears yet his wife's last whisper, 'Tor 
freedom and our land!" and dies hear- 
ing it — these men can bind no laurels on 
* Written on 24th May, 1899. 



The South African Question. 



i03 



a soldier's brow ! They may be shot, not 
conquered — fame rests with them. Go, 
gallant soldiers and defend the shores 
of that small island that we love ; there 
are no laurels for you here ! 

WHO GAINS BY WAR? 

Not we the Africans, whose hearts 
are knit to England. We love all. Each 
hired soldier's bullet that strikes down 
a South African, does more ; it finds a 
billet here in our hearts. It takes one 
African's life — in another it kills that 
which will never live again. 

WHO GAINS BY WAR? 

There are some who think they gain ! 
In the background we catch sight of 
misty figures; we know the old tread; 
we hear the rustle of paper, passing 
from hand to hand, and we know the 



104 The South African Question. 

fall of gold ; it is an old familiar sound 
in Africa ; we know it now ! There are 
some who think they gain! Will they 
gain? 

But it may be said, ''What matter 
who goads England on, or in whose 
cause she undertakes war against Afri- 
cans; this at least is certain, she can 
win. We have the ships, we have the 
men, we have the money." 

We answer, ''Yes, might generally 
conquers — for a time at least." The 
greatest empire upon earth, on which 
the sun never sets, with its five hundred 
million subjects, may rise up in its full 
majesty of power and glory, and crush 
thirty thousand farmers. It may not 
be a victory, but at least it will be 
a slaughter. We ought to win. We 
have the ships, we have the men, and 



The South African Quj:stion. 105 

we have the money. May there not be 
something else we need? The Swiss 
had it when they fought with Austria ; 
the three hundred had it at Thermopy- 
lae, although not a man was saved; it 
goes to make a victory. Is it worth 
fighting if we have not got it ? 

I suppose there is no man who to-day 
loves his country who has not perceived 
that in the life of the nation, as in the 
life of the individual, the hour of ex- 
ternal success may be the hour of irrev- 
ocable failure, and that the hour of 
death, whether to nations or individ- 
uals, is often the hour of immortality. 
When William the Silent, with his little 
band of Dutchmen, rose up to face the 
whole Empire of Spain, I think there is 
no man who does not recognize that the 
hour of their greatest victory was not 
when they had conquered Spain, and 



106 The South African Question. 

hurled backward the greatest Empire of 
the world to meet its slow imperial 
death ; it was the hour when that little 
band stood alone with the waters over 
their homes, 



and stood, facing it. It is that hour 
that has made Holland immortal, and 
her history the property of all human 
hearts. 

It may be said, ''But what has Eng- 
land to fear in a campaign with a coun- 
try like Africa? Can she not send out 
a hundred thousand or a hundred and 
fifty thousand men and walk over the 
land ? She can sweep it by mere num- 
bers." We answer yes — she might do 
it. Might generally conquers; not al- 
ways. (I have seen a little muur kat 
attacked by a mastiff, the first joint of 



The South African Question. 107 

whose leg it did not reach. I have seen 
it taken in the dog's mouth, so that 
hardly any part of it was visible, and 
thought the creature was dead. But it 
fastened its tiny teeth inside the dog's 
throat, and the mastiff dropped it, and, 
mauled and wounded and covered with 
gore and saliva, I saw it creep back into 
its hole in the red African earth. ) But 
might generally conquers, and there is 
no doubt that England might send out 
sixty or a hundred thousand hired sol- 
diers to South Africa, and they could 
bombard our towns and destroy our vil- 
lages; they could shoot down men in 
the prime of life, and old men and boys, 
till there was hardly a kopje in the 
country without its stain of blood, and 
the Karoo bushes grew up greener on 
the spot where men from the midlands, 
who had come to help their fellows, fell, 



108 The South African Question. 

never to go home. I suppose it would 
be quite possible for the soldiers to 
shoot all male South Africans who ap- 
peared in arms against them. It might 
not be easy, a great many might fall, 
but a great Empire could always import 
more to take their places ; we could not 
import more, because it would be our 
'husbands and sons and fathers who 
were falling, and when they were don€ 
we could not produce more. Then the 
war would be over. There would not 
be a house in Africa— where African- 
born men and women lived — without 
its mourners, from Sea Point to the 
Limpopo; but South Africa would be 
pacified — as Cromwell pacified Ireland 
three centuries ago, and she has been 
being pacified ever since ! As Virginia 
was pacified in 1677 ; its handful of men 
and women in defence of their freedom 



The South African Question. 109 

were soon silenced by hired soldiers. "I 
care that for the power of England," 
said "a notorious and wicked rebel" 
called Sarah Drummond, as she took a 
small stick and broke it and lay it on 
the ground. A few months later her 
husband and all the men with him were 
made prisoners, and the war was over. 
"I am glad to see you," said Berkely, 
the English Governor, "I have long 
wished to meet you ; you will be hanged 
in half an hour!" and he was hanged 
and twenty-one others with him, and 
Virginia was pacified. But a few gen- 
erations later in that State of Virginia 
was born George Washington, and on 
the 19th of April, 1775, was fought the 
battle of Lexington — ''Where once 
the embattled farmers stood, and fired 
a shot, heard round the world," — and 
the greatest crime and the greatest folly 



110 The South African Question. 

of England's career was completed. 
England acknowledges it now. A hun- 
dred or a hundred and fifty thousand 
imported soldiers might walk over 
South Africa; it would not be an easy 
walk ; but it could be done. Then from 
east and west and north and south 
would come men of pure English blood 
to stand beside the boys they had played 
with at school and the friends they had 
loved ; and a great despairing cry would 
rise from the heart of Africa. But we 
are still few. When the war was over 
the imported soldiers might leave the 
land — not all ; some must be left to keep 
the remaining people down. There 
would be quiet in the land. South Af- 
rica would rise up silently, and count 
her dead, and bury them. She would 
know the places where she found them. 



The South African Question. Ill 

South Africa would be peaceful. There 
would be silence, the silence of a long 
exhaustion — but not peace! Have the 
dead no voices? In a thousand farm 
houses black robed women would hold 
memory of the count, and outside under 
African stones would lie the African 
men to whom South African women 
gave birth under our blue sky. There 
would be silence, but no peace. 

You say that all the fighting men in 
arms might have been shot. Yes, but 
what of the women ? If there were left 
but five thousand pregnant South Afri- 
can-born women, and all the rest of 
their people destroyed, those women 
would breed up again a race like to the 
first. 

OH, LION-HEART OF THE NORTH, 

do you not recognize your own lineage 



112 The South African Question. 

ill these whelps of the South ? We can- 
not Hve if we are not free ! 

The grandchildren and great-grand- 
children of the men who lay under the 
stones (who will not be English then 
nor Dutch, but only Africans) , will say, 
as they pass those heaps: "There lie 
our fathers, or great-grandfathers who 
died in the first great War of Indepen- 
dence," and the descendants of the men 
who lay there will be the aristocracy of 
Africa. Men will count back to them 
and say : My father or my great-grand- 
father lay in one of those graves. We 
shall know no more of Dutch or Eng- 
lish then, we shall know only one great 
African people. And we? We, the 
South Africans of to-day, who are still 
English, who have been proud to do the 
smallest good so it might bring honor 
to England, who have vowed our vows 



The South African Question. 113 

on the honor of EngHshmen, and by the 
faith of Enghshmen — what of ttsf 

What of us ? We, too, have had our 
vision of Empire. We have seen as 
in a dream the Empire of England as a 
great banyan tree ; silently with the fall- 
ing of the dew and the dropping of the 
rain it has extended itself ; its branches 
have drooped down and rooted them- 
selves in the earth ; in it all the fowl of 
Heaven have taken refuge, and under 
its shade all the beasts of the field have 
lain down to rest. Can we change it for 
an upas tree, whose leaves distill poison 
and which spells death to those who 
have lain down in peace under its 
shadow ? 

You have no right to take our dream 
from us ; you have no right to kill our 
faith ! Of all the sins England will sin 



114 The South African Question. 

if she makes war on South Africa, the 
greatest will be towards us. 

Of what importance is the honor and 
faith we have given her ? You say, we 
are but few ! Yes, we are few ; but all 
the gold of Witwatersrand would not 
buy one throb of that love and devotion 
we have given her. 

Do not think that when imported sol- 
diers walk across South African plains 
to take the lives of South African men 
and women, that it is only African sand 
and African bushes that are cracking 
beneath their tread : at each step they 
are breaking the fibres, invisible as air, 
but strong as steel, which bind the 
hearts of South Africans to England. 
Once broken they can never be made 
whole again; they are living things; 
broken, they will be dead. Each bullet 
which a soldier sends to the heart of a 



The South African Question. 115 

South African to take his Hfe, wakes up 
another who did not know he was an 
African. You will not kill us with your 
Lee-Metfords : you will make us. There 
are men who do not know they love a 
Dutchman ; but the first three hundred 
that fall, they will know it. 

Do not say, ''But you are English, 
you have nothing to fear : we have no 
war with you !" 

There are hundreds of us, men and 
women, who have loved England; we 
would have given our lives for her ; but, 
rather than strike down one South Af- 
rican man fighting for freedom, we 
would take this right hand and hold it 
in the fire, till nothing was left of it but 
a charred and blackened bone. 

I know of no more graphic image in 
the history of the world than 



116 The South African Question. 
THE FIGURE OF FRANKLIN 

when he stood before the Lords of 
Council in England, giving evidence, 
striving, fighting, to save America for 
England. Browbeaten, flouted, jeered 
at by the courtiers, his words hurled 
back at him as lies, he stood there fight- 
ing for England. England recognizes 
now that it was he who tried to save an 
Empire for her ; and that the men who 
flouted and browbeat him, lost it. There 
is nothing more pathetic than the way 
in which Americans who loved Eng- 
land, Washington and Franklin, strove 
to keep the maiden vessel moored close 
to the mother's side, bound by the bonds 
of love and sympathy, that alone could 
bind them. Their hands were beaten 
down, bruised and bleeding, wounded 
by the very men they came to save, till 
they let go the mother ship and drifted 



The South African Question, 117 

away on their own great imperial course 
across the seas of time. 

England knows now what those men 
strove to do for her, and the names of 
Washington and FrankHn will ever 
stand high in honor where the English 
tongue is spoken. The names of Hutch- 
inson, and North, and Grafton are not 
forgotten also; it might be well for 
them if they were ! 

Do not say to us : ''You are English- 
men; when the war is over, you can 
wrap the mantle of our imperial glory 
round you and walk about boasting that 
the victory is yours." 

We could never wrap that mantle 
round us again. We have worn it with 
pride. We could never wear it then. 
There would be blood upon it, and the 
blood would be our brothers'. 

We put it to the men of England. 



118 The South African Question. 

In that day where should we be found ; 
we who have to maintain Enghsh hon- 
or in the South ? Judge for us, and by 
your judgment we will abide. Remem- 
ber, we are Englishmen ! 

* * ^ s|t H< 

Looking around to-day along the 
somewhat over-clouded horizon of 
South African life, one figure strikes the 
eye, new to the circle of our existence 
here; and we eye it with something of 
that hope and sympathy with which a 
man is bound to view the new and un- 
known, which may be of vast possible 
good and beauty. 

What have we in this man, who rep- 
resents English honor and English wis- 
dom in South Africa ? To a certain ex- 
tent we know. 

We have a man honorable in the re- 
lations of personal life, loyal to friend, 



The South African Question. 119 

and above all charm of gold ; wise with 
the knowledge of books and men; a 
man who could not violate a promise 
or strike in the dark. This we know we 
have, and it is much to know this ; but 
w4iat have we more? 

The man of whom South Africa has 
need to-day to sustain England's honor 
and her Empire of the future, is a man 
who must possess more than the knowl- 
edge and wisdom of the intellect. 

When a woman rules a household 
with none but the children of her own 
body in it, her task is easy ; let her obey, 
nature and she will not fail. But the 
woman who finds herself in a large 
strange household, where children and 
step-children are blended, and where 
all have passed the stage of childhood 
and have entered on that stage of 
adolescence where coercion can no more 



120 The South African Question. 

avail, but where sympathy and compre- 
hension are the more needed, that wo- 
man has need of large and rare qualities 
springing more from the heart than 
from the head. She who can win the 
love of her strange household in its 
adolescence will keep its loyalty and 
sympathy when adult years are reached 
and will be rich indeed. 

There have been Englishmen in Af- 
rica who had those qualities. Will 

THIS NEW ENGLISHMAN OF OURS 

evince them and save an Empire for 
England and heal South Africa's 
wounds? Are we asking too much 
when we turn our eyes with hope to 
him? 

Further off also, across the sea we 
look with hope. The last of the race of 
great statesmen was not put intO' the 



The South African Question, 121 

ground with the old man of Hawar- 
den; the great breed of Chatham and 
Burke is not extinct; the hour must 
surely bring forth the man. 

We look further yet with confidence, 
from the individual to the great heart 
of England, the people. The great 
fierce freedom-loving heart of England 
is not dead yet. Under a thin veneer 
of gold we still hear it beat. Behind the 
shrivelled and puny English Hyde who 
cries only ^^gold," risas the great Eng- 
lish Jekyll, who cries louder yet "Jus- 
tice and honor." We appeal to him; 
history shall not repeat itself. 

Nearer home, we turn to one whom 
all South Africans are proud of, and 
we would say to Paul Kruger, "Great 
old man, first but not last of South 
Africa's great line of rulers, you have 
shown us you could fight for freedom ; 



122 The South African Question. 

show us you can win peace. On the 
foot of that great statue which in the 
future the men and women of South 
Africa will raise to you let this stand 
written: This man loved freedom, 
and fought for it; but his heart was 
large; he could forget injuries and deal 
generously.' " 

And to our fellow Dutch South Afri- 
cans, whom we have learnt to love so 
much during the time of stress and 
danger, we would say : ''Brothers, you 
have shown the world that you know 
how to fight ; show it you know how to 
govern; forget the past; in that Great 
Book which you have taken for your 
guide in life, turn to Leviticus, and 
read there in the 19th chapter, 34th 
verse : 'But the stranger that dwelleth 
with you shall be unto you as one born 
among you, and thou shalt love him as 



The South African Question. 123 

thyself; for ye were strangers in the 
land of Egypt. I am the Lord your 
God/ " 

Be strong, be fearless, be patient. 

We would say to you in the words 
of the wise dead President of the Free 
State which have become the symbol 
of South Africa, "Wacht een heetjey 
dies zal recht kom/' (Wait a little, 
all will come right. ) 

On our great African flag let us em- 
blazon these words, never to take them 
down, "FREEDOM, JUSTICE, 
LOVE"; great are the two first, but 
without the last they are not complete. 

Olive Schreiner, 

2 Primrose Terrace, 
Berea Estate, 
Johannesburg, 
June, 1899. South African Republic. 



HISTORY OF BOHEMIA, 

by Robert H. Vickers, 

8vo, Cloth with map and illustrations, $3.50 



Endorsed by the Bohemians of America, through their 
national organzation, as the most complete, accurate, 
and sympafhetic narrative of their country's history 
in English. 

In the compilation of his stiring- narative Mr. 
Vickers has availed him.self largely of material 
derived from native scources, and he deserves 
the thanks of Bng-lish-reading students for hav- 
ing compressed so much substance into a single 
book. — The Nation. 

Mr. Vickers has rendered a great service to 
Bohemia in this work, and has evidently spared 
no pains to make it valuable. — Boston Herald. 

As a contribution to general historical litera- 
ture, Mr. Vickers' volume is an important event. 
— Chicago Evening Post. 

Robert H. Vickers has rendered a lasting ser- 
vice to the Bohemian residents in Am.erica * 
* * The body of the work bears every 
evidence of being a thorough and valuable con- 
tribution to Bohemian history. It is a work 
which fills a field hitherto altogether unoccupied. 
—Chicago Evening Journal. 



CHARIyES H. Si^RGKI^ COMPANY, 

FUBIylSH^RS, CHICAGO. 



HISTORY OF PERU, 

by Clements R. Markham, 

C. B., F. R. S., F. S. A., President Hakluyt Society, Presi- 
dent Royal Geograpiiical Society, and author of "Cuzco 
and Lima," "Peru and India," etc. 

8 vo, cloth, with maps and illustrations, $ 2.50. 

The highest authority on Peruvian history. — 
The Critic. 

Mr. Markham has done his work well, and 
with ardent love for his subject. The country is 
a favorite one with him, and has furnished 
him. with m.atter for three monog-raphs before 
the present history. In a necessarily limited 
space he has given the leading facts, and taken 
a comprehensive view from the earliest time, 
down almost to the current year. Not the least 
interesting portions are the brief but strongly 
individual sketches of some of the remarkable 
men who have figured in the annals of Peru. In 
a few virile paragraphs he presents the more 
famous generals, viceroys, presidents and pat- 
riots, The book is well equipped with maps, 
abounds with pictures, and has an appendix 
rich in its statistics and important documents. 
— The Literary World, 

Mr. Markham is thoroughly at home with his 
subject. He possesses a strong, graphic style 
eminently suited to it, and the amount of in- 
formation that he has managed to crowd into 
the space at his disposal is simply marvelous. — 
New Orleans Picayune. 

CHARIyES H. vSKRGEily COMPANY, 

PUBI^ISHBRS, CHICAGO. 



HISTORY OF CHILE, 

by Anson Uriel Hancock, 

Author of * 'Old Abraham Jackson," "Coitlan, A Tale of 
the Inca World," etc. 

8vo, Cloth, with map and illustrations, $2.50 
It has been Mr. Hancock's endeavour to give 
a "complete short history and picture of Chile 
in a single volume. ' ' We may congratulate him 
on having achieved his design. Mr. Hancock's 
virtures are those of painstaking chronicler. 
And he has those virtues in full quantity. Not 
that the author is without dramatic power. The 
concluding: chapters of this valuable book on the 
ethnology, geology, agriculture, communica- 
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terest. — Londo7i Saturday Review. 

Within the compass of less than 500 octavo 
pages the author gives a succinct and rapid nar- 
rative of the history of Chile, its institutionss, 
the character of its people, and its present con- 
ditions, resources and outlook. He has made a 
painstaking examination of authorities, and has 
preserved a due sense of proportion. — Boston 
Journal. 

It is on the period between the years 1830 and 
1880, however, that the interest of the reader 
will concentrate itself, and recognizing this fact 
Mr. Hancock has spared no pains in rendering 
this part of the work the most brilliant and au- 
thentic. It is in every respect a thoroughly read- 
able and accurate work, dealing with the history 
of a country which promises to be of much 
greater importance among the nations of the 
earth. — Philadelphia Item. 

CHARIvES H. SERGEIy COMPANY, 

PUBWSHEIRS, CHICAGO, 



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